Their enemies are not the natural predators of the mountain, like the lynx, which is probably already extinct in the region, but poachers armed with Kalashnikovs.

Although they are a protected species, the chamois living high in the Pinde mountain chain of Epirus, hard against the frontier with Albania, are a favorite prey of the hunters.

"No one has been convicted of killing a chamois since 1969, when hunting of it became strictly forbidden," according to Haritakis Papaioannou of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

He appealed to the Greek government to keep its promise to create a national park, and to react more aggressively against the poachers.

They have flourished and the chamois have correspondingly diminished since tracks were created that allow all-terrain vehicles to reach the summits.

Steel barriers erected across the paths by ecologists are regularly destroyed. Hunters' groups, which are powerful throughout the region, have strongly protested the installation of the barriers, claiming they have their own patrols to deal with the problem of poaching.

But the poachers are well organized, arriving not only with the high-powered Kalashnikov rifles but also with walkie-talkies that enable them to round up their prey. Albania is a major source for the rifles, which can kill at a distance of 600 meters (yards).

Last year Papaioannou himself stumbled upon two hunters skinning a chamois they had shot on the slopes of mount Tymphi. He managed to film the scene and passed the video to the authorities, but so far no one has been arrested.

The progressive disappearance of the chamois and other species is upsetting the ecological balance in the region, according to naturalists, threatening other species that occupy the peaks, such as the golden eagle and the bearded vulture.

Papaioannou said that of about 130 chamois on the Tymphi massif, at least 15 have been killed this year -- one by a wolf and two by golden eagles, but the rest by man.

According to local residents, meat from the slaughtered animals is offered to inn-keepers for 50 euros (60 dollars) a kilo. The chamois, an antelope-like creature about the size of a goat, is noted for its agility and its ability to cling to rocky inclines.

TERRA.WIRE